Why?
by Pugglemuggle
Summary: Hungary is with Austria and Prussia is not. He won't ever be. Because the Hungary he knew, the Hungary he fell in love with, is gone. Very angsty


**Why?**

I can never forget.

The way her hair reflected the soft October sunlight, like fire, dangerous and mesmerizing, terrible and beautiful. The way her wild green eyes flashed with a living rage, with passion. The way she could smile, condescending and smug one moment, and then something truly different, a smile that was real and radiant and genuine. A smile that was brighter than the sunlight that shone on her hair. Sometimes, it looked like the light was coming from _her, _that the world around here was merely complementary and she was the focal point of it all. She was life itself.

I can never forget who she was back then, so powerful and so strong and so _brave._ I can never forget how we used to run in the woods, chasing each other, wet leaves sticking to the bottom of our boots and making the forest floor shine green. But not as brightly as her dark auburn curls, not as brightly as the green of her eyes. I can never forget her laugh, bursting crisply through the sea of trees as if she were flying up above, in the canopy, rather than racing across the damp earth. Though if anyone asked me, I would tell them that she _was _flying. Because she had never been earthbound, no, she was a girl of the air, a piece of the sky, an angel. An arrogant, fierce, willful angel, but an angel who I knew, who I understood, who I could hate and fight and taunt and tease.

And love.

I can never forget that I loved her.

That I still love her.

I can never forget how well I knew her face. I knew each minute detail, like the way her brows creased in the middle when she concentrated, or the way her lips parted slightly when she told a lie. I can remember lolling on our backs in the middle of grassy valleys in the mornings, just staring at the sky. Her eyes watering when the grass pollen began to irritate her. Laughing about it. I remember sitting together on hilltops at midday, feeling like we were the rulers of everything, feeling like as long as we stayed together, we could do whatever we wanted, and no one could stand in our way.

Was it childish to think that? Perhaps. But children are allowed to be naïve, even children who were as ancient as we were. We thought we had the whole world in the palms of our hands, holding it between us like we could really become _great_, like we could really obtain _greatness_, like our two countries could be led to triumph by just wishing for it.

But someone wiser than me once said that love is not a victory march. He was right.

All _great_ things- fame, wealth, happiness, even love- come with a price. We couldn't understand that then, _wouldn't_ understand. A child is allowed the luxury of being unaware of their future. A child is blessed with ignorance.

I can never forget that I am no longer a child.

When did it happen?

When did we stop being children, children who fought dragons and hunted stags and wrestled trolls? When did we stop being fearless? When did our courage desert us, like flurries of snow darting frantically down from the darkness, down to the cold and unforgiving earth below? When did her flame begin to dwindle, replaced by a frigid and barren expanse of fallen snow? When did her fire turn into dark, silent ashes, the remnants of something that only now I can realize was sincerely _great_? When had the mirror shattered, preventing me from ever seeing these sincerities again, condemning me to a distorted reflection of broken falsehoods seen through scattered shards?

When had she slipped away?

I know the answer.

She left me behind when the call of stability sang through the cacophony of war. She left be behind when she was promised another life, a quiet life, a life of love. She left me behind when I was not the best thing the world had to offer her. She left me behind when _he_ became better.

I blame him entirely. Because of him, I must only remember, can never forget. He took her and convinced her of a life that wasn't free, wasn't _alive_ the way she loved to be. He stole her away from me, and he didn't even have the courtesy to even take _her_. Instead, he took just the shell, leaving her _greatness_ behind in tattered pile of what she once was, what she could have been, and what _we _could have been, all jumbled up without concern for order. The girl he took wasn't really _her. _He'd already destroyed _her_.

I see them every day.

I see them talk together, walk together, smile and laugh. He holds her hand, tenderly, gently, and she leans against his shoulder, as if she has forgotten everything she used to be, everything strong and independent that she used to fight to keep. How can she throw it all away? How can she live in this hideous defeat, this calm, this propriety? How can she stand this quiet, reserved life, this life that he pushed upon her, this life that oppresses every single part of the girl I knew? The girl I loved?

I can never forget this agony, this cold and bitter pain. I've stopped counting the years that I've been enduring this pain, stopped counting the decades, the centuries. The throbbing anguish is the same as it was the first time I saw him curl his arm around her waist, saw him pull her close and burry his face in her hair, saw the look in her deep green eyes, the look that meant she _loved_ him.

She loved him.

No phoenix will rise from the ashes of who she was. The girl I loved is gone. Finished. Dead.

So why does it hurt so much to see her with him, hurt so much that, sometimes, when I'm alone and I've been loosened a bit by alcohol or by some sort of memory or relic from the past, I sit on the floor and sob, sob until the tears don't come anymore and I'm left with such a horrible emptiness in my chest that I can't eat without the food immediately coming back up?

He didn't just destroy one spirit when he took her. He destroyed mine as well.

And who am I, really? My people are gone, my leaders have died, and my country no longer exists. How am I alive? Am I damned, fated to suffer this life of eternal longing, an intense desire for something that I can never have?

I would give everything I have, _everything_, just to be with her for one moment, the real her. Just instant so that I could see her again, one last time. It would mean more than the world itself, more than all the worlds, more than anything else in my life so far. Sometimes, I wonder if she's still there, deep down, buried under polite smiles and nice dresses. Sometimes, I think I catch a glimpse of her slipping through that sophisticated facade; small things like an irritated sigh that manages to slip past her lips, or the occasional hint of sarcasm in the off comment.

But perhaps I'm just imagining them.

Because I can never forget that she no longer belongs to me.

Because I can never forget that, in the end, she chose him.

Because I can never forget that I don't even exist anymore.

Because I can never forget that I am nothing and she is everything.

I can never forget that.


End file.
